Motortrend's Rivian R1T Yearlong Review: Winter Snowstorms Tire Out Our Electric Pickup (but it handled everything the mountain threw at it)

Rivian R1T Yearlong Review: Winter Snowstorms Tire Out Our Electric Pickup

Our photographer takes the R1T on a snowboarding trip that turns into an odyssey.

February 21, 2023

https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2022-rivian-r1t-yearlong-review-update-5-winter-storm/

Either the ice and frozen mud cut those sidewalls, or those sidewalls will get cut really easily.

Ugh. Almost no one is prepared for 2 flats. Overall the truck handled its business but the tires are another story. I do wonder about those Pirelli ATs and whether they are as tough as other off road tires. They are pretty new to the AT market.

On the bright side, if this were a YouTube influencer review, they would have made a hysterical video accusing Rivian of attempted murder.

Bad luck with the tires? The headline for me was that it reportedly outperformed some other vehicles like a 4-Runner and Land Cruiser.

Not checking tire pressure before heading into the mountains? Installed a spare without checking, and correcting, tire pressure? Let alone not knowing how to check... Little sympathy for the results. Even with TPMS and all the other bells and whistles of modern day vehicles, a proper recovery kit includes a pressure gauge.

Let’s not forget the 12 foot rooster tails he mentioned. In rocky/icy terrain it’s very easy to damage a tire doing that. I don’t know where he went but Big Bear trails can have some rough edges.

Compounding that with a 7000 pound truck and a tire’s life is a difficult job.

COdogman said:

Ugh. Almost no one is prepared for 2 flats. Overall the truck handled its business but the tires are another story. I do wonder about those Pirelli ATs and whether they are as tough as other off road tires. They are pretty new to the AT market.

On the bright side, if this were a YouTube influencer review, they would have made a hysterical video accusing Rivian of attempted murder.

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Hey @COdogman , just wanted to say, as probably a lot of the folks on the forum, how much I look forward to your responses. You bring a lot of chuckles when we need it. Glad you are a part of this community!. Keep it up!

PSA, The tester in the photo above is using the supplied screw jack incorrectly. The arms need to be parallel (not perpendicular) to the truck frame or as you lift the jack will bend on an angle and probably fail at some point.

The headline and blurb (trip turns into an odyssey) makes it seem like the R1T let them down in some way -- like they would have preferred to have an ICE truck. But the body of the article is the exact opposite: they wouldn't have wanted to be up the mountain with any other truck, and the R1T outperformed everything else they encountered on the trail.

Riviot said:

Not checking tire pressure before heading into the mountains? Installed a spare without checking, and correcting, tire pressure? Let alone not knowing how to check... Little sympathy for the results. Even with TPMS and all the other bells and whistles of modern day vehicles, a proper recovery kit includes a pressure gauge.

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Had the vehicle for a year but didn't know how to bring up the tire pressures on the driver display? Motortrend really needs to hire people that have a greater attention to detail than my pet rocks do.

uthatch said:

Let’s not forget the 12 foot rooster tails he mentioned. In rocky/icy terrain it’s very easy to damage a tire doing that. I don’t know where he went but Big Bear trails can have some rough edges.

Compounding that with a 7000 pound truck and a tire’s life is a difficult job.

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This is the answer. He was bashing the tires with 900 ft/lbs of torque against ice and rock.

If only there were a reason a journalist may get two flats completely "by accident"?

Trandall said:

PSA, The tester in the photo above is using the supplied screw jack incorrectly. The arms need to be parallel (not perpendicular) to the truck frame or as you lift the jack will bend on an angle and probably fail at some point.

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Thank you for the helpful PSA from someone who has never used one of these screw jacks...

COdogman said:

I do wonder about those Pirelli ATs and whether they are as tough as other off road tires. They are pretty new to the AT market.

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They're a P-metric rather than LT, so I wouldn't expect them to do well. If you recall the early reviews from the media drive out near Redcone/Webster several of them had flats.

could have been worse... they could have flipped & rolled it unexpectedly. I hear it is easy to do.

On my first winter trip (with less than a few hundred miles on the car) I took a nail in an R1S tire on a mountain pass. Changing a tire on a frozen incline was impossible, so I had to limp 30 miles to a town, refilling air every five miles. I found the jack to be undersized and very slippery. Even on flat surfaces, the car was prone to slipping when jacked up on snow and only one tire is providing traction.

The car needs to ship with chocks, a heat pump, and better anti lock capability for regen (even in snow mode). And the 21” wheels desperately needs a winter tire option.

Some wisdom from an old-timer: I’ve had many, many flats with electric cars, driving them exclusively over the last eleven years. The rate was perhaps one flat a year in Teslas. I was hoping Rivian would be different, but I now believe the combination of oversized vehicle weight, torquey motors and low rolling resistance features (for range) stresses/weakens the tire and results in many more failures. Once they fail they tend to go to zero PSI very quickly, too.